The Romantic Attitude! "EXISTER, pour nous, c'est SENTIR" (For us, to exist is to feel.)"If I give myself up to love, I want it to wound me deeply, to
electrify me, to break my heart or to exalt me...what I want is to
suffer, to go crazy..." (George Sand)

I. Intro:
An aesthetic style and attitude of mind; roughly the 1850s through the
1900s; a revolt agains conventional authority, rationalism &
neoclassicism of the Enlightenment and looks to the medieval Gothic Age for inspiration; a search for personal freedom;
against industrialism, social convention, & church (leads to
alienation); valued reason less, but included emotion and intuition as WHOLE
of human experience; looked to nature for divine inspiration
(Freidrich); revival of ancestral/nationalistic roots & glorification
of self as hero (Delecroix: Liberty Leading the People).

II. Romantic Age Visual ArtA. The Divine in nature: what's industrialism got to do with it?B. Landscape: What is "Romantic mysticism"?Note the role of nature in works by the following artists:
1. Constable2. Turner: what statement is he making?3. Friedrich4. Zhou5. Church6.Cole7. Bierstadt: the American West; Native America

III. PoetryA. Ah Wordsworth: "the sponmtaneous overflow of feelings, ...from emotion recollected in tranquility." 1. imagination & poetic language2. Tintern Abbey: Freidrich painted ruins, Wordsworth described them in words to create visuals in the mind. 3. the ruins of a medieval monastery4. a paean to nature (what's a "paean"?)B.
Shelley: Ozymandias (look this up on line): read this outloud. Several times--
especially the last three lines. Listen for the sound of the wind over
the empty desert sandsC. Keats: compare to the expression of life's transience by some of the northern baroque painters

IV. Romantic Philosophy & HegelA. What is Dialectic? B. What is the ultimate goal of Hegel's Dialectic?

V. ScienceA. Darwin1. What a difference a word makes: Perhaps if he had called it "The Ascent of Man"?But
that was the point; he challenged tradition with the idea of "natural
selection." What does "natural selection" mean? How is it connected to
evolution and survival of an organism? 2. Who was Bishop Ussher? Who was he to decree religious doctrine? Should the Divine Being punch a human-made time clock?3. Darwin didn't deny a divine Creator, so what was all the fuss about?4. Why were some humans uncomfortable thinking that the universe might be impersonal?5. Why were some humans upset about being "robbed of their preminence on [the] planet"?B. What is Social Darwinism? How did Herbert Spencer subvert and exploit Darwin's evolution by
applying it socially?What were the dreadful consequences?

V. American RomanticismA. Transcendentalism1. What is "holistic," and what does it have to do with Hinduism and Buddhism?2. What does transcendentalism have to do with civil disobedience, passive resistance, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King?B. How does Romantic Age transcendentalism and passive resistance fit into abolitionism?1. Frederic Douglass & Sojourner Truth: brilliant achievement and self-determination; how are they heroes?2.
What does Douglass say about moral responsibility and crime in terms of
slavery? Why might this make slave owners want to think twice about
slavery?

X. Romantic Age Sculpture & ArchitectureA.
Rude: La Marseillaise: how does this symbolize romantic age heroism and
natioanlism? Note the details of this sculpture as you listen to the
song "The Marseillaise" (France's national anthem--you can find a
version on YouTube --sing along!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pimdpgeVobE&feature=related). Watch
the classic film Casa Blanca for Extra Credit--see/email me for details.B. Nash: The Royal Pavilion: look at the details in the visual of this structure: how do you describe it?1. what design elements does Nash combine?2. What's a "pastiche"?

XI. Romantic Age Music A. Beethoven1. Listen to symphony #5 2. what's the 4-note motif?3. How did Beethoven describe this motif?B.
Wagner: Wagner set myth to music and used musical phrases to signify
specific characters. Your text has a lot of fancy words for this, and I
could get in trouble with the opera police (a tough lot, they are), but
a cool influence Wagner has had is heard in the music for the classic
Star Wars films. Everyone recgonizes Pum-Pum-Pum-Pum-pa-pum-pum-pa-pum,
and knows Darth Vader will appear, and that's pure Wagner.

Sample questions from class:1. How do Friedrich’s paintings express religious mysticism?
(what
do mountains, the ray’s of the setting sun, fir trees, abbey
ruins symbolize?)2. How do the Pre-rahaelites express the duality of female stereotypes (angelic, and "femme-fatale")?3.
Nonsense! How does Carroll parody the Romantic age renewal of idealistic
"neo-medievalism"? 4. Which female steroetype Keats represent in his poem?5. Which female stereotype does Tennyson represent in his poem?6.
How does popular composer McKennitt juxtapose a lullaby with the topic
of Blakes poem? What sense or feeling does this convey to you as you
listen to the words and music?7.
Art inspires art, inspires art:
how do you perceive the whole as presented in class: Tennyson's poem,
the Pre-raphaelites paintings, and McKennitt's & Autum's music? (If
you can answer this, you'll recognize related test questions.)

Sample questions: (the test will include questions from text, Study Guide, & class)
1. Why is Napoleon considered a "romantic hero"?2. Why is "Faust" a "romantic hero"?3. What is "nationalism" and "imperialism"? How do they create
conflict?4. How did George Sand’s life and works defy social
convention?5. The feeling of loyalty to a specific territory whose inhabitants
share a common language and culture is called what?6. American romantics who believed that knowledge gained through
intuition
surpassed knowledge gained through reasoning were called what?7. How does George Sand contradict the female romantic age stereotype?8. In what way was Gordon, Lord Byron himself a "romantic hero"?9. Why would some people consider Faust to be the symbol of Western
man?10. How do Turner's works differ from other "romantic"
artists,
and from works we've seen from the baroque age?11. The idea that species flourish because they are able to preserve
certain traits that enable them to survive is called what?12. What does “evolution by natural selection” mean?13. What does “survival of the fittest” mean?14. In what way was Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond an adventure
in practical
survival? In what way was it a mystical experience?15. The process by which a condition (thesis) generates an opposite
condition (antithesis) to produce a synthesis is called what?16. Who was the American romantic who developed the notion of
passive
resistance later adopted by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?17. What did Romanticism rebel against?18. Did Social Darwinists use the theory of evolution to justify
imperialism
and economic exploitation? What assumptions did they make?19. What poet asserts that pleasure is fleeting and that art alone
records
the pleasure of the past?20. Who was the author who retreated to Walden Pond to write
“a
handbook for living”?21. Does Darwin’s conception of evolution indicate that
it must
have occurred over vast periods of time?22. The misinterpretation of Darwin by which the “survival of
the fittest”
is applied to social groups instead of species is called what?Check the text website for Multiple Choice Quizzes that accompany each chapter.

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by 2008
D.A.Maukonen, MLS, University of Central Florida. All rights
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Last modified February 27th, 2010